On Wednesday, May 13th, IAR hosted an event designed to showcase 4th quarter students and their production skills. Selected student-mentors in their 4th quarter worked together to create and run an event for their peers. The event began with an introduction by each mentor and a candid Q&A about IAR’s program. The 4th quarter mentors provided insight and guidance to students in their 1st and 2nd quarters about what to expect and how to best use their knowledge. The mentors then demonstrated the step-by-step process of producing a track with ProTools and Reason. The demo started by creating a beat in Reason and then layering additional sounds and effects. Next they played the beat and student-mentors recorded tracks for bass, guitar, and keyboard in ProTools. Wes, a student-mentor who acted as main producer for the event, controlled the session and created loops, fades, and synched up audio segments, explaining every step of his mix.

Faculty members Mario Salvati and Steve Eigner injected comments about their studio experiences; Mario observed: “Recording a segment of audio and then cutting and pasting it throughout the complete track is a technique used in much of today’s production work. But to get more texture and feeling in the music, it’s best to have the artists record the entire song from beginning to end. The small differences and changes make the song that much better.” Finally, members of the audience added their own freestyle vocals to the track. While Wes created the final mix, students networked with one another and exchanged engineering ideas. In just 45 minutes, the student-mentors successfully used what they were learning at IAR to record and produce a finished track.